SOURCE: Herf, Jeffrey. “Explaining the Holocaust?” Partisan Review 67, no. 3 (summer 2000): 504-10.

In the following review, Herf argues that The Holocaust in American Life offers interesting research and insights, but comments that Novick's argument is one-sided and fails to take into account other possible explanations for the continuing preoccupation with the Holocaust in American culture.

Historians of Jewish and European history have been aware for some time that a focus on the Holocaust has advantages as well as drawbacks. The history of the Jews is by no means only or primarily a history of suffering, persecution, and victimization. Yet a focus on the Holocaust tends to push interest in and knowledge of Jewish theology, culture, and moral traditions to the margins. Similarly, though the Holocaust is inseparable from many of Europe's and Germany's traditions, there are many continuities and traditions which have nothing to do with it, or with...